Vicious Cycle is known for their adaptations of cartoons and animated movies to playable media. Their library entails titles like Ben 10 Galactic Racing, Turbo: Super Stunt Squad, Madagascar 3: The video game and so on. A cooperation with Cartoon Network results in: Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations.

Story

Whether or not you are a fan of the series shouldn’t affect the way you enjoy the story. It is quite self-contained, not completely so that non fans will be shown the door and they are given a hard time trying to get their head around the story. There are some things that are established in the show but aren’t fleshed out in the game and might leave you with some questions. You won’t get the full background story on the characters, so you’ll just have to roll with it.

The writing of the conversations is really spot on. It makes it so that younger players are entertained, but the older audience will read between the lines and know what is being truly meant. This doesn’t only apply to the jokes. There is some really deep conversation in there hidden behind a quip which you might miss if you aren’t paying attention. Don’t judge a book by its cover even if it is an adaptation of a cartoon.

Graphics

The graphics of Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations are decent. They aren’t current generation quality, but they are in line with their source material. Animations are quite well done, but when you run, it doesn’t really feel like you are that much faster than when you are just walking. This is a slight annoyance as the lack of speed might feel like padding as you’ll be running around for quite a bit to solve the problems.

When you are in combat, you’ll visibly see that you have been hit. After some hits Jake and Finn will be bruised and battered and afterward they’ll collapse if you’ve taken too many hits. Fixed camera angles can be quite a pain, but not in Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations.

Sound

The true merit of this game is the voice acting. It is clear and really well done. The original cast of the show has been used for the voices and though this won’t really be something that’ll be a big deal to the non-fans, it gives the game its authenticity. Some of the conversations might not look like much on paper, but when you hear them, they’ll make you chuckle. The mysteries are like onions. They have layers, and you’ll be jumping through hoops. This might seem like it’s tedious, but whenever you’ve finished a task, you are rewarded with a jingle and Jake and Finn saying something positive. It’s really addictive and whenever this happens you feel a rush of glee.

Gameplay

Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations is an action adventure puzzle game. When it starts, you’ll be greeted by Quber, who will tell you how things will transpire. He’ll inform you on the fact that he has five cases for you to solve. You are probably thinking: “Just five?” This will be over quick. To be honest… No, it won’t be over quickly. The cases are all quite long and just when you think things will go smoothly and you’ll have finished the case, things just get started. You’ll have to solve puzzles to continue the stories and finish one. These puzzles can be fetch quests where the items you need have to be found and delivered to a person who’ll unlock something for you, so you can progress, or you’ll have to combine items to get to the solution and sometimes you’ll have to combine an item with Jake.

The three buttons you’ll be using the most are the square, cross and circle button on the Playstation version. Circle will let you interact with items, this will either be that you react or you’ll pick them up. The cross button is used for examining things while square is used for using items on set pieces. Items are locked to the square button and by pressing the R2 button you’ll toggle which items is assigned to the square. This makes solving puzzles that much more easy. You won’t have to dig into your inventory to use item, but combining them is done in here though. If you are thinking that the puzzles will be a pain to solve, think again, they are rather straight forward. This might put off most veterans to puzzle games or just games in general, but Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations is catered to a less mature audience and to that point, the puzzle do cater to the demographic.

But Adventure Time: Finn and Jake Investigations is more than just running around and finishing fetch quests and solving puzzles. It also holds some combat. Combat in which you can’t die, but your overall prowess will affect your loot. This does sound promising, but often the loot is non-existent and this is a slap in the face when you’ve done all you can to ace the fight. Not that that is a difficult thing to do. The fighting takes notes from the Batman Arkham series. Not that it’s that fun, but that Finn jumps around the battlefield, teleporting around from enemy to enemy, even if they are several feet away, to land a sword hit on their faces. This is hilarious, but also quite broken. Getting a chain is really easy this way.

The lack of loot is annoying because it could have added more depth to the combat. Upgrades for Jake or your sword could have been unlocked or other team attacks. That’s not the case however.

Conclusion

If you are a great Adventure Time fan this is something right up your ally. If you are into puzzle games then this is for you too. If you are on the fence of whether or not you are into puzzle games and need a low learning curve game to get you into it, jump aboard. However, this game isn’t for anyone looking to train or maintain a high level of grey matter. An entertaining game that won’t really blow your mind, but might distract it and keep it occupied.

First game ever was Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped, ever since then, gaming has been something that I've gravitated to. Reading's fun but not as interactive. Always up for a bout of online multiplayer. If that multiplayer is co-op. So if you are up for a friendly co-op session, hit me up. Rahenik's the name to search on PSN.